The present invention relates generally to display devices, and more particularly to a dynamic display assembly of interconnected display members colored in various hues with fluorescent pigment, and designed to be illuminated by a source of ultraviolet light.
In its preferred form herein shown and described, the invention includes a base having mounted therein a drive means such as an electric motor for rotating a vertically oriented upwardly projecting shaft having a stub on which the display assembly proper is mounted. The display assembly or array includes a number of display members, here illustratively three, each consisting of a framework of circular elements which may be in the form of stiff wire coated with a fluorescent material, the several circular elements of each display member desirably having a different hue. Thus a display member is generally spherical in shape, with the circular wire elements constituting meridians of the sphere. The elements of the largest display member are fixed at one of their intersections, constituting a pole of the sphere, to the stub shaft.
Within the largest display member is a smaller display member, desirably similar to the outer display member just described except as to size. The second display member is supported by the first, or outer, display member by a flexible support element such as a thin wire or the like, which itself is not coated by any pigment, and which is therefore substantially invisible when the display assembly is illuminated by ultraviolet light. The flexible support elements extends from one pole of the first display member to a pole of the second display member.
A third display member, smaller than the second display member but otherwise similar thereto, may be received within the second display member and supported thereby through a similar flexible support element such as a thin wire extending from a pole of the second display member to a pole of the third display member.
The display array as thus assembled and mounted on the shaft stub is then rotated by rotation of the shaft while being illuminated only by a source of ultraviolet light, desirably housed in the base of the device. Since each of the display members, being essentially a skeleton of meridians, includes a multiplicity of openings, it will be understood that the inner second and third display members above described will be at least intermittently visible to the observer during rotation of the shaft and display array. The inner display members may remain generally concentric with the outermost display member during rotation, or the inner display members may move through random eccentric paths during rotation. The resulting appearance is striking and arresting, and the effect can be further heightened by stroboscopically varying the exciting frequency of the ultraviolet light source.
It is accordingly a principal object of the present invention to provide and disclose a novel dynamic display. Other objects of the invention are to provide, in such a display, a plurality of nested display members, the display members being provided with a multiplicity of openings whereby the inner display members are at least intermittently visible to the observer; to provide in such a structure display members made up of meridians of a sphere, the meridians being coated with a fluorescent material, and including an ultraviolet light source; to provide in such a structure flexible elongated support elements attached at either of their ends to the pole portions of adjacent display members; to provide in such a structure means for stroboscopically varying the frequency of excitation of the ultraviolet light source; and for other and additional purposes as will be understood from a reading of the following description of a preferred form of the invention, taken in connection with the accompanying drawings.